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It saddens me to forward the news that our good friend and fellow photographer, Matt Quinn, has passed.
As some of you may know, he had been battling cancer for a while and was on his way to recovery.
Please take a moment to remember him in your prayers.

"Sometimes imagination is no more than randomness applied." —Piet Francke

thank you Minnie, About my workflow... my desire is to be "more deliberate". That is - with each step I must mentally have a goal in mind, a problem that needs solving, and a plan to deal with that problem. Then I focus and attempt to beat up on that aspect of the image. If the image improves, I must in my mind be able to account for "why" it improved. (what did I do right, what did I do wrong). Then, rinse and repeat.

That is so cool Piet !!! I'm gonna have to learn the technique for some future projects.
Dave

Thanks Dave, I just stumbled onto an online course (mostly free) at www.ctrlpaint.com that teaches both photoshop and art/drawing, but what is cool is that it is a series of 5 minute videos that actually look like they are in the proper order for good skill building. I might learn how to draw yet!!! I am a great believer that diverse skills when integrated, build on each other.

Hi, Meet Benedikt Hellhorn - Evil Warrior, Reaper Miniature available at Amazon for ten dollars and fifty cents. From the bottom of his boots to the top of his helmet is almost exactly one and one half inches of pewter - he is pretty heavy.
...

Paladins are cool, but an evil paladin, that's just evil in the best possible way!

Hi, Meet Benedikt Hellhorn - Evil Warrior, Reaper Miniature available at Amazon for ten dollars and fifty cents. From the bottom of his boots to the top of his helmet is almost exactly one and one half inches of pewter - he is pretty heavy.
...

Paladins are cool, but an evil paladin, that's just evil in the best possible way!

Hi, Meet Benedikt Hellhorn - Evil Warrior, Reaper Miniature available at Amazon for ten dollars and fifty cents. From the bottom of his boots to the top of his helmet is almost exactly one and one half inches of pewter - he is pretty heavy.
...

Paladins are cool, but an evil paladin, that's just evil in the best possible way!

Hi, Meet Benedikt Hellhorn - Evil Warrior, Reaper Miniature available at Amazon for ten dollars and fifty cents. From the bottom of his boots to the top of his helmet is almost exactly one and one half inches of pewter - he is pretty heavy.
...

Paladins are cool, but an evil paladin, that's just evil in the best possible way!

Something to think about - he's evil, make him look it! S-

an attempt to make him look fearsome at least...

BenediktFearsomeS.jpg

He’s looking wonderfully fierce. This is amazing to watch.

"God gave me photography so that I could pray with my eyes" - Dewitt Jones

After seeing Frank's painterly beach buddies, I wanted to see if I could make this image more painterly. I have been thinking/wondering what it is that makes a photograph different from a painting. I have been reading Schmid - who maintains that the quality of a painting (image for us) can be defined as a combination of only four things - the drawing, the value, the color, and the edge quality. Making a traditional painting has to be a very additive process - that is you start with a blank page and then you prioritize what you wish to see and you add stuff - dabs, brush strokes, glaze, whatever.

I think when you start with a photograph, you can add, but also, you have to be able to subtract. You have to somehow remove detail in a fashion leaving only those strokes that a painter might have made - a pretty impossible task.

For this play session I wanted to see if I could control Edge. Sharpening and blurring are the obvious answers to this problem (I think). I chose to integrate the Nik impression tool into the potential solution.

I picked up with Benedikt where we left off and first ran him through Topaz Simplify and chose one of the underpainting filters. Then using the untouched Benedikt (my starting point for this effort) I ran him through a number of Topaz Impression filters and made sure that the effects of some were more coarse than the effects of others. My stack Top to Bottom looked like this:

Then using the different masks I allowed the image detail and edges to become obliterated and gradually worked detail back in through the layers. My result isn't better than what I started with, but I DID gain an easy control over the edges and I think I introduced a little bit more of a painterly feel - making it look less like something that was sourced from a photograph.

Just being straight forward as usual here Piet...new Benedikt just seems softer and darker than fearsome Benedikt to my untrained eye.....and I would say my image was more of a watery colory look which I think a touch different than painterly but that's just semantics......yes a new word "colory".....Bahahaha

About photoMentoris

The founding principles of photoMENTORIS is to have a place where professional and enthusiast photographers could come and meet in order to teach, share and learn from each other. It is our goal to foster this principle in an atmosphere that encourages creativity and exploration and promotes the advancement of our art through peer mentoring and supportive critique, while having fun along the way.